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A top Vatican official sought Wednesday to downplay the Vatican's opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, saying it only objected to the means of disarming Saddam Hussein, not the ends. French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican foreign minister during the war, stressed the Vatican did indeed oppose the conflict and thought U.N. weapons inspections should have been allowed to continue. But he said Pope John Paul II shared Washington's ultimate aims in Iraq. "The Holy See is not pacifist," he said. "It is a peacemaker." Tauran, who in November was named to head the Vatican library and archives, made the comments on the sidelines of a conference to launch a book by the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, James Nicholson, on the history of U.S.-Vatican relations. The conference, which was attended by many members of the Vatican diplomatic corps, came as the Vatican has tried to move beyond its disagreements with Washington over the Iraqi conflict and work toward bringing peace and stability to the country. In the book, "USA and the Holy See: The Long Road," Nicholson seeks to correct what he calls public misconceptions about the Vatican's position toward Iraq in months leading up to the war. He says the pope never said the war was immoral, just that it should only be used as a last resort. "The differences that we had were essentially reduced to the question of whether all the diplomatic means to obtain Iraqi disarmament had been taken before recourse to military action," Nicholson wrote. While Washington believed that Iraq would never abide by U.N. resolutions to disarm, "the Holy See continued to believe that inspections and dialogue offered a means to resolve the concerns of the international community," he wrote. Tauran largely agreed, summarizing Nicholson's argument in his comments to the conference at the Pontifical Lateran University. "He affirms that if the positions weren't always in agreement, it was due more to disagreements over the means than on the ends, thanks to the values that both parties share," Tauran said. Tauran went further in comments to reporters afterward, saying there was a public perception that the Vatican was "anti-American" when in reality it merely opposed the American choice to go to war. "(The Vatican) understood that there was a situation that had to be resolved, but with other means," he said. "It was against the war. Washington thought that the time had come to resolve it with war. We said war is the last recourse." He acknowledged though that such a "preventive war" had no justification in international law or in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which does allow for the use of military action in certain circumstances, such as self-defense. On several occasions before and during the war, the pope and top Vatican officials � including Tauran � made clear they opposed military conflict. In one of his most famous speeches in the weeks before the war's start, John Paul said: "No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity." Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, went further, saying a preventive war against Iraq was a "war of aggression," and therefore not a "just war." But with the end of active military conflict, the Vatican has turned its attention to the future of Iraq, preferring not to dwell on the differences with Washington. "The important thing now is what do we do for the Iraqis tomorrow," Tauran said. "We have to work together." xponent Axis Of Cute Little Kitty Cats Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
